What if Wayne Gretzky got hit by a bus before having kids?
December 10, 2015 12:38 AM Subscribe
Creatures avoiding planks - "After around a thousand generations of training, the agents became half decent at avoiding planks. Please see the final result in this demo."
"The design of creatures was indirectly influenced by my childhood memories of Ghibli anime, namely the black-dust creatures called Makkuro kurosuke (真っ黒黒助) from Totoro."
"The design of creatures was indirectly influenced by my childhood memories of Ghibli anime, namely the black-dust creatures called Makkuro kurosuke (真っ黒黒助) from Totoro."
Note: post is about programming this, not about Wayne Gretzky mating with Totoro.
posted by pracowity at 12:59 AM on December 10, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by pracowity at 12:59 AM on December 10, 2015 [3 favorites]
I think it was Stanislaw Lem who described the meeting of a pair of his ancestors who both took a different path to work one morning which resulted in their meeting, offspring and ultimately Lem.
The real miracle obviously is our ability to have this knowledge and yet rather than go mad we spend our time fist-pumping and cheering at the little purple thing narrowly avoiding those increasingly hazardous planks.
posted by fullerine at 1:04 AM on December 10, 2015 [5 favorites]
The real miracle obviously is our ability to have this knowledge and yet rather than go mad we spend our time fist-pumping and cheering at the little purple thing narrowly avoiding those increasingly hazardous planks.
posted by fullerine at 1:04 AM on December 10, 2015 [5 favorites]
Bringing the same, supposedly very fit genes back into your breeding program time after time after time seems to justify Leto II's treatment of Duncan Idaho.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 1:31 AM on December 10, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 1:31 AM on December 10, 2015 [5 favorites]
Watching that, I find myself empathizing when a group gets caught and exterminated in a trap with no way out.
posted by Dip Flash at 1:38 AM on December 10, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by Dip Flash at 1:38 AM on December 10, 2015 [4 favorites]
Fascinating. (They probably tend to form groups because they are more likely to bump into each other and breed when there's a bunch of them gathered in one area. A singleton doesn't breed.)
posted by Autumn Leaf at 2:49 AM on December 10, 2015
posted by Autumn Leaf at 2:49 AM on December 10, 2015
Interesting. He seems to be keeping the mutation point quite low, which results in very 'samey' behaviour of his agents. Maybe throwing in a bit more randomness might help find a better general solution, or it could be that the agents just can't get much better with the limitations that the have.
posted by YAMWAK at 3:06 AM on December 10, 2015
posted by YAMWAK at 3:06 AM on December 10, 2015
Fascinating. (They probably tend to form groups because they are more likely to bump into each other and breed when there's a bunch of them gathered in one area. A singleton doesn't breed.)
During a machine learning course in grad school, we covered genetic algorithms using a simulated environment filled with behaving agents, similar to the one in the link. In order to examine the influence of cost functions on the development of the gene pool, the instructor included various parameters for us to juke: if you weighted longevity more heavily, you'd end up with a more conservative batch of agents. If you increased the importance of distance traveled, you'd get more cavalier beasts who ranged throughout the environment and died quick deaths. Amongst the parameters was one for how frequently an agent reproduced. When you spend a week or so talking about the theory behind GAs, reproduction rate becomes a pretty sterile concept, just another part of the metaphor, like mutation rate. It's not really reproduction, it's just an algorithm. So when you reify the metaphor by using a GA to control the behavior of simulated animals, it's easy to overlook some of the possible consequences of fiddling with what you now consider to be quite abstract processes.
Except for my friend, who immediately saw the possibilities. He bumped up the importance of reproducing to its maximum, and severely devalued things like "survival" or "exploration." It took depressingly few generations before the genes mandating constant reproduction dominated the pool. Agents bumped into one another and never left, even when they were faced with starvation. There was a maximum of 100 agents supported by the simulation, and by the end they were all gathered together in a single clump, reproducing as fast as possible and dying almost immediately, only to be replaced by offspring that were just as eager to continue the cycle with any other agent that happened to be nearby. Frequently this was a product of the same pairing that had produced the agent itself, so incest wasn't just common, it was almost required. Given the lack of diversity in the total gene pool, however, it was a pretty much a moot point anyway.
posted by logicpunk at 3:46 AM on December 10, 2015 [9 favorites]
During a machine learning course in grad school, we covered genetic algorithms using a simulated environment filled with behaving agents, similar to the one in the link. In order to examine the influence of cost functions on the development of the gene pool, the instructor included various parameters for us to juke: if you weighted longevity more heavily, you'd end up with a more conservative batch of agents. If you increased the importance of distance traveled, you'd get more cavalier beasts who ranged throughout the environment and died quick deaths. Amongst the parameters was one for how frequently an agent reproduced. When you spend a week or so talking about the theory behind GAs, reproduction rate becomes a pretty sterile concept, just another part of the metaphor, like mutation rate. It's not really reproduction, it's just an algorithm. So when you reify the metaphor by using a GA to control the behavior of simulated animals, it's easy to overlook some of the possible consequences of fiddling with what you now consider to be quite abstract processes.
Except for my friend, who immediately saw the possibilities. He bumped up the importance of reproducing to its maximum, and severely devalued things like "survival" or "exploration." It took depressingly few generations before the genes mandating constant reproduction dominated the pool. Agents bumped into one another and never left, even when they were faced with starvation. There was a maximum of 100 agents supported by the simulation, and by the end they were all gathered together in a single clump, reproducing as fast as possible and dying almost immediately, only to be replaced by offspring that were just as eager to continue the cycle with any other agent that happened to be nearby. Frequently this was a product of the same pairing that had produced the agent itself, so incest wasn't just common, it was almost required. Given the lack of diversity in the total gene pool, however, it was a pretty much a moot point anyway.
posted by logicpunk at 3:46 AM on December 10, 2015 [9 favorites]
so, I'm hoping after a few thousand generations of evolution, the critters do avoid planks like pros, but, I'll never let the simulation get that far; the hopeless and seemingly endless genocide of cute little critters before that is unnerving and intolerable. *closes sim*
posted by and they trembled before her fury at 4:26 AM on December 10, 2015
posted by and they trembled before her fury at 4:26 AM on December 10, 2015
I thought for sure this was gonna be about some scientist somewhere with a bunch of mice, a long stick dabbed with peanut butter, and a five gallon bucket.
posted by newpotato at 4:30 AM on December 10, 2015
posted by newpotato at 4:30 AM on December 10, 2015
Meanwhile, we've become so good at avoiding planks that we've taken up inventing new kinds of planks.
posted by Wolfdog at 4:57 AM on December 10, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by Wolfdog at 4:57 AM on December 10, 2015 [4 favorites]
am i the only one that feels sorry for these little things?
(and i am reading this post instead of fixing my own dumb GA evolved neural nets which are persistently refusing to play decent go. i think i need more cutsey graphics.).
posted by andrewcooke at 5:01 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
(and i am reading this post instead of fixing my own dumb GA evolved neural nets which are persistently refusing to play decent go. i think i need more cutsey graphics.).
posted by andrewcooke at 5:01 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
awww they turn into little ghosts when they hit a plank 👻
posted by moonmilk at 7:38 AM on December 10, 2015
posted by moonmilk at 7:38 AM on December 10, 2015
> endless genocide of cute little critters
Clicking planks, the critters cycle through appearances, one of which are simple circles that cleanly disappear when they die.
posted by morganw at 7:41 AM on December 10, 2015
Clicking planks, the critters cycle through appearances, one of which are simple circles that cleanly disappear when they die.
posted by morganw at 7:41 AM on December 10, 2015
Wolfdog: "Meanwhile, we've become so good at avoiding planks that we've taken up inventing new kinds of planks."
You can have my plank when you pry it from my cold, dead blob.
posted by Rock Steady at 7:51 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
You can have my plank when you pry it from my cold, dead blob.
posted by Rock Steady at 7:51 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
Most stressful screen saver ever.
posted by Omnomnom at 7:59 AM on December 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Omnomnom at 7:59 AM on December 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
Frequently this was a product of the same pairing that had produced the agent itself, so incest wasn't just common, it was almost required. Given the lack of diversity in the total gene pool, however, it was a pretty much a moot point anyway.
I call it The Aristocrats!
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 8:16 AM on December 10, 2015 [6 favorites]
I call it The Aristocrats!
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 8:16 AM on December 10, 2015 [6 favorites]
Get out of the corner you stupid bastards!
posted by Barry B. Palindromer at 2:35 PM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Barry B. Palindromer at 2:35 PM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
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